


windswept

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Konoha Village, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 19:07:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12372135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: You have never been anything but wild.





	windswept

 

 

  
This is what you know: your name is Uzumaki Naruto and you are an orphan. When people see you in the street they flinch, or spit, or wrinkle their noses. You are unwanted, always and everywhere. You are alone, everywhere, always.

You take your anger and spite and craft plans around it, make laughter out of it. A prankster is cursed but only invisible when he wants to be, only because he has a plan You make yourself impossible to ignore. And when the Uchiha guards come, when down-covered and sticky merchants cry out _thief, somebody chase him!_ your feet take you away.

The wind pulls at your hair, the blue sky calls to you. Run, run, fast. Faster. Away from the village, towards the village, it is all the same. There is only ever you and the village. Home or hunting grounds, there has never been the possibility of a difference for you.

Your name is Uzumaki Naruto, parentless and clanless. You are the architect of all your successes. Joy comes to you in many forms and you grasp it, everywhere and always. Unwanted and alone, and afraid, far too often. The reason you are so kind is because you have known helplessness so well. 

 

 

 

You know this also: when Jiji walks into a room people still. They do not go afraid, exactly, because your Jiji is a kind man, with sad-kind eyes, but they go careful. They bow, and stutters, and listen to every single word out of his mind, track his movements with respect and awe.

He will die on day, and the hat will pass on to another. You want that person to be you. You want to be that powerful, and that adored. Impossible to ignore; carve your face in a mountain, make your name an echo, the word the wind loves the most. All the leaves in all the trees of the great Leaf village, murmuring, _ours, ours. Precious, ours_. That is the dream, the dream that grows from all other dreams. The one you have nurtured from a seed, the one you are determined to see go from sapling to deep-rooted reality. 

You know it will not happen for a long time. That it is for the best, you know, for all that your hands are endlessly restless, your mind flighty as a bird, your feet fast as quicksilver. There is much to learn, and the thought of Jiji dead makes brittle fear and protective urges come to life in your breast.

But you want. You are a wanting creature, sharp-deep feelings and defined goals. The path in vague, but the hunger in your heart has never been anything but clear.

You have never been anything but wild.

 

 

  
There is a very specific taste in the air before a big storm comes in, curtaining off the sun and growing thunder at the earth. It smells like fresh mould and a little bit like iron, and like what wind tastes like when it has travelled a long hard way and is tired. You know this, so deeply you could never hope to forget it.

You have known it since before you were born. This: the moment before the sky breaks open, when the first heavy drops fall and clean everything in their path, when the wind picks up speed and finds its voice. The second before lightning splits the world with power and interrupts that darkness with light.

  
You think, though there is no one to ask, so you can’t of course know for sure, that you were probably born under stormy skies.

 

 

 

There are more failings to your name than anything else. No one allows you to forget this. Dead-last, behind in all things. You hurry in the hope of catching up. You hurry, you try, you fail.

You try again. And again. Dead-last is still something. Dead-last means you are still a contender. You tell everyone, often and loudly, about how you will one surpass them all, they and their expectations, so that when it happens they will know that you had never meant anything but the truth. You will not let anyone or anything make an promise-breaker out of you.

There is so much much weighting you down. So little of it you had a choice in. It pierces deeply, the unfairness of it all. It makes you aware from a young age to the value of choices, promises. To make something happen because you say it will. Like a _jetsu_ of some sort, but not really; like the opposite of an illusion.

All that you are and will be comes from that place of belief and longing in your heart, the grasping selfishness of your hands. You run when you can and when you can’t you walk, crawl, drag yourself. Away from nothing, because there are secrets and old griefs chasing your every step, and it is best to accept it; towards everything, because everything is in front of you.

You have made this the cornerstone of your life: if no one else believes you, you must. Someone has to. That is the only way promises ever work.

 

 

 

  
You will never tell anyone this, but it took until your second year at the Academy to realize that not everyone remembers as you do. The other kids, they are whole. That is to say, they are uniform. Like trees are just trees and shadows of trees are their own, separate thing. Iruka-sensei is only ever Iruka-sensei. Sakura-chan is only Sakura-chan. Sasuke-teme can only be Sasuke-teme.

It was a surprise, realizing this. You, Naruto-the-boy, Naruto-the-shadow-of-the-boy. You did not know people could be just the one thing.

It is not simple data, or even instinct. It is experience, rather. Not perfect recall, but more like a dream dreamed all his life. The certainty of having prowled dark forests on moonless nights, a dozen forests, a hundred nights. It is recalling the self-satisfied comfort of dozing on sunbaked stone on top of a mountain and sleep for years, without fear of being attacked, knowing that no creature under the sky would dare.

It is the absolute knowledge of what blood tastes like. Of what it is to curl up around precious-beings, beings-like-you, strangely shaped but made of the same matter, and be warm and safe and precious.

And hate. You remember hate very well. There was never the opportunity of forgetting that.

More than anything else, you remember the running. In every lifetime, towards and from, hunting and hiding, you have found your grounding in out-racing the wind.

 

 

 

You are Uzumaki Naruto. You will always be an orphan, and it will be years before you know the history of your clan, years more before you accept its legacy. There will be people precious to you that will welcome your presence and words, find comfort and strength beside you. One day you will walk down the streets of your village and people’s voices will not go deferential, their backs will straighten, not bent. They will feel brave, around you. They will smile, call out in greeting as you run by them, as dust and laughter rise in your wake. 

You have never been anything but precious. You do not know this yet, but you will.

 


End file.
